Abstract
Those with impeccable taste and a wardrobe to match are reaping the rewards with an abundance of clothing rental platforms and communities surfacing online. Similar to other peer-to-peer clothing rental platforms like ClosetDrop, Rent the Runway or Curtsy app, Clothes for Rent Perth is a Facebook group that has been created to form a community around clothing items or accoutrements for rent, assisting others search for the perfect outfit. This paper analyses the role of trust in Web 2.0 communities, particularly online fashion communities, integrating the concepts of social network theory and social capital. The paper proceeds as follows. The first section introduces the concept of social capital and trust. Then, an attempt at defining communities and virtual communities is presented and the theory of the blackboard model of mediated community is adopted. Subsequently, the argument that trust, as an element of social capital, is integral to the success of online fashion communities like Clothes for Rent Peth is entrenched in the discussion of Web 2.0, social networking sites (SNS) and communities. The adequacy and relevance of sources from the literature on the identified concepts are presented throughout the paper.
Keywords: online fashion communities, Web 2.0, social networks, social capital, trust
Forming Friendships Through Online Fashion Communities
Founded by sole admin/moderator Madeline Taylor – co-owner of ClosetDrop, another peer-to-peer clothing rental platform – Clothes for Rent Perth is a Facebook community that allows for greater accessibility to fashion in a cost-effective manner. Although the concept of renting clothes is not new, peer-to-peer service models have disrupted the industry as items are exchanged directly from loaners to renters, removing the need for physical retailers. As such, Clothes for Rent Perth has no brick-and-mortar stores and exclusively operates online. With more than 6,500 members to date, Clothes for Rent Perth has established a niche audience among young women in Perth, Western Australia. The thriving sharing economy enables Australians to make a profit from their existing investments, and Madeline is merging fashion technology and the sharing economy to distinguish her businesses in the competitive market. Clothing rental platforms have become extremely popular on a global scale and while alternate Clothes for Rent Facebook groups exist based on geographical location, for the purpose of this paper Clothes for Rent Perth will be the focus. The success of clothing rental platforms and communities is attributed to the nature of Web 2.0 (collaborative and community-oriented) and its tools such as SNSs like Facebook. With reference to Clothes for Rent Perth, this paper explores trust as an element of social capital, arguing the necessity of such for online fashion communities to flourish.
Social Capital and Trust in Online Social Networking Sites
Social capital has a prominent place in the literature of a variety of disciplines including but not limited to economics, sociology and political science (see Engbers, Thompson & Slaper, 2017, pp. 537, 538). Social capital can be viewed as “An umbrella theory that brings together such concepts of social networks, trust, social exchange, social resources, embeddedness, and social support” (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 510). Grabner-Kräuter (2009) states, “Despite the conceptual confusion surrounding social capital, most researchers agree that social capital refers to investment in personal relationships or social structure that facilitates the achievement of individual or collective goals” (Glanville & Bienstock, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 510). Most of Engbers et al. (2017) recent scholarship traces the contested origin of social capital to Coleman’s (1988) treatise on Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital (p. 538). Coleman (1988) states that:
“Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors – whether persons or corporate actors – within the structure” (Coleman, 1988, p. 98).
Although Coleman’s work is said to have established social capital, the conceptual understanding and the diverse quantification of the concept flourished with the publication of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone in 2000 (Engbers et al., 2017, p. 538). Grabner-Kräuter (2009) states, “Putnam’s definition represents a synthesis of the network and trust views of social capital: ‘the core idea of social capital is that social networks have a value… social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups’” (Putnam, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 510). One of the key categories explored in relation to social capital is trust. Best stated by Wellman et al., SNS members “Tend to trust strangers, much as people gave rides to hitchhikers in the flowerchild days of the 1960s” (as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 511).
For communities like Clothes for Rent Perth to operate effectively, a great deal of trust is required on the behalf of members. With Madeline as owner, Clothes for Rent Perth functions similarly to ClosetDrop. Therefore, as stated on ClosetDrop (2018), it is at the discretion of members to make contact, negotiate prices, pick-up and return options. So, what happens if an accident occurs and red wine is spilt on a favourite white dress, or a pair of jeans are returned with a split? The moral philosopher Annette Baier presented a valuable starting point in defining trust, suggesting “We trust when we are vulnerable to harm from other yet believe these others would not harm us even though they could” (Friedman, Kahn & Howe, 2000, p. 34). Members of clothing rental platforms are vulnerable, however, being a location-based service, many Clothes for Rent Perth members have ties (predominantly weak) or “friends” within the group which reassures trust. Furthermore, the members of Clothes for Rent Perth are dependent on each other for desired outcomes, thus as active members become familiar over time and share positive experiences, the level of trust is heightened within the community.
Communities in an Offline and Online Context
There is no singular definition of community. Traditionally, communities referred to a group of people occupying a shared location and although this is historically accurate, for many, locality is no longer a key definer of fellowship. While people are born into allocated communities, nowadays communities can also be initiated or selected by individuals themselves due to the ease and accessibility of such enabled by the Internet and Web 2.0. The term community is also used to describe “The condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and/ or interests in common with others” (“community | Definition of community in English by Oxford Dictionaries”, n.d.). In both instances, communities are framed as valuable, positive entities that offer an experience of ‘togetherness’ and sense of ‘belonging’. As stated by Forman, Kern and Gil-Egui (2012) “Communities are constantly shifting, merging, and redefining themselves”.
What once was an offline activity that required very little association with others, renting clothes has been introduced online and services like Clothes for Rent Perth encourage communication, connection and collaboration with others to achieve collective goals – shifting, redefining and merging the renting community. Discussions of the online environment often involve communities. Leal, Hor-Meyell and de Paula Pessôa (2014) define virtual communities as “Social aggregations on the Internet…where individuals conduct public discourse for a period of time and with a certain degree of involvement” (p. 883). Mirroring contemporary offline communities, they are “Constructed around a common interest, experience, or task that members have, and guided by both explicit and implicit codes of conduct” (Hagel & Armstrong, as cited in Leal, Hor-Meyll & de Paula Pessôa, 2014, p. 883). These individuals form networks that “Provide friendship, information, belongingness and social resources to each other” (Wang et al., as cited in Leal, Hor-Meyll & de Paula Pessôa, 2014, p. 883). The Clothes for Rent Perth community provides these elements through the renting process. While many members have associations or friends within the group, the opportunity remains to establish new relations with others by providing information and social resources. Additionally, these elements are linked to social capital.
As aforementioned, communities can be developed upon common interests, many of which are related to purchases (Leal, Hor-Meyll & de Paula Pessôa, 2014, p. 882). Aguiton and Cardon (2007) discuss the blackboard model of mediated community based on Michel Gensollen’s (2003, 2006) research. Gensollen underlined that “Virtual communities have a blackboard structure when they are organized to share experience between consumers” (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007, p. 53). A blackboard structure is indicated for Clothes for Rent Perth as the community functions on the premise of positive experiences both with loaners and their “products”. Members of the Clothes for Rent Perth community can only develop an instrumental intimacy between them and are connected by very weak ties as they purely interact for the purpose of exchanges (outfits for money and vice versa) (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007, p. 53). True for Clothes for Rent Perth, “The organisation of exchanges doesn’t require strong involvement of the whole community, but a cluster of very active participants can lead the community in producing a lot of external effects” (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007, p. 56).
Web 2.0 and Communities
Intended to distinguish activities from traditional static and passive Web pages, the popular term Web 2.0 denotes a modernised version of the Web. As stated by Grabner-Kräuter (2009), “The essential difference between Web 2.0 and the traditional Web is that content is user-generated, and there is considerably more collaboration amongst Internet users” (p. 505). The definition of Web 2.0 has been subject to much refinement over the years. Tim O’Reilly is credited with the seminal work on Web 2.0 and is said to offer the most comprehensive definition of this phenomenon, stressing network effects that arise from vast user participation and collective intelligence as significant features of Web 2.0 (Fuchs, 2010, p. 775; O’Reilly, 2005). While a literature review by Fuchs (2010) determines that several authors have developed similar concepts of Web 2.0 as a platform for cooperation (p. 776), Fuchs (2010) discussion of the concept as focused on the notions of online communication, community-formation, and collaboration (p. 766) is more applicable to this paper.
Fuchs (2010) outlines three evolutionary levels of Internet development, defining “Web 1.0 as a tool for human communication, Web 2.0 as a medium for human communication, and Web 3.0 as networked digital technologies that support human cooperation” (p. 767). This demonstrates that the highly interactive technologies of Web 2.0 and beyond have shifted the platform from a systems-oriented model to a user-focus model. Furthermore, Fuchs (2010) suggests that “What is today designated as “Web 2.0” functions both as ideology and realm of commodification” (p. 767) – particularly applicable to Clothes for Rent Perth. “Web 2.0 functions as ideology in a threefold sense: as marketing ideology, as neoliberal ideology, and as political ideology. A second aspect…is that it also has an economic function that is supported by the ideological components” (Fuchs, 2010, p. 768). Communities like Clothes for Rent Perth “Constitute an audience commodity that is then sold to advertisers” (Fuchs, 2010, p. 768). Such is derived from users being content producers (user-generated content), whereby members can upload or browse media, or accrue friends with whom they exchange content or communicate online on SNSs like Facebook. Facebook is a friendship-oriented network – the SNS emphasises staying in touch with and/or reconnecting with people (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 507). As one of the most popular SNSs with more than 2.13 billion monthly active users for the fourth quarter of 2017 (Facebook, 2018), Facebook transcends barriers to bring users together.
Social Networks and Communities
Web 2.0 application, online SNSs or virtual communities, have enabled potential for “Rich, online human-to-human interaction unprecedented in the history of Internet communication” (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 505). Fuchs (2010) states that “The usage of community-functions provided by social networking platforms has been rising during the past few years” (p. 771). SNSs utilise mobile and web-based technologies to establish highly interactive platforms that support users to:
“(1) construct a public or semi-public profile… (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 211).
This definition implies that users are linked in some respect, regardless of the strength of social ties (Lange, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 507). boyd and Ellison (2008) state “While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users of the system” (p. 211). “Much of Web 2.0 is based upon – or actually built upon – increased personal information flows online” (Zimmer, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 505). Upon joining an SNS, users are asked to fill in the required information to generate a profile for themselves. Evidence from many SNSs indicate that millions of users do not hesitate to share personal information or content online, despite the risks related to privacy or security issues on SNSs (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 506). In fact, “Users actually tend to trust other community members with expertise, identity, personal information, and even money lending. Users also tend to trust providers of social network sites to keep their information and photos private” (Lai & Turban, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 506). Therefore, “Social networking obviously takes place within a (largely unwarranted) context of trust” (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 506). Consequently, questions arise regarding why social networking users are so trusting.
The public display of profiles and connections is a crucial component of SNSs as this information can determine membership to a virtual community. Clothes for Rent Perth is discoverable but closed (private) community to the general public. Membership requires a user request to join and approval by the admin, Madeline. Assumedly, Madeline views the requesting user’s profile to determine whether membership is reasonable based on factors like profile picture, age, and geographical location. Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave comments or messages both publicly, on another’s profile (depending on personal user settings), and privately in direct messages (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 213). Profiles enable discovery of others in the system with whom they have a relationship – acquaintances, friends, and followers (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 213). “The term “friends” can be misleading as the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense, and the reasons people connect are varied” (Boyd, as cited in Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 213).
Network ties like friendships formed in communities are closely related to social capital theory, “Adopting a social network approach to the analysis of trust involves the assumption that individual actors are embedded within a network of relationships” (Jones, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 511). Granovetter (1992) describes embeddedness as “The influence of the network on its members’ behaviour,” and suggests that “Being embedded in cohesive networks accelerates the creation of trust. The cohesiveness of the network structure, where a specific relationship is embedded, facilitates the circulation of information about parties’ reputation and the socialization of common behaviour” (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 511). Therefore, the behaviour of community members is determined by the prevalent characteristics of its network (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 511). This explains the role of trust in the Clothes for Rent community, if all members behave ethically, a person behaving opportunistically will feel guilty in doing so (Ganzaroli, as cited in Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 511)
As detailed, the affordances of SNSs provide a rich environment where social capital can be developed and refined (Burke, Kraut & Marlow, as cited in Lee, 2017, p. 1069).
Conclusion
“The relationship amongst the concepts of social networks, social capital and trust is far from conclusive” (Grabner-Kräuter, 2009, p. 510), and this paper contributes to an ongoing dialogue regarding these concepts. It is an attempt at a conceptual understanding of the role of trust in Web 2.0 communities, particularly online fashion communities, and the relevance of trust and social capital in SNSs. This paper argues that trust, as an element of social capital, is necessary for online fashion communities to succeed. With reference to peer-to-peer clothing rental platform Clothes for Rent Perth, this paper determined that trust and social capital results from the affordances of SNSs like the construction of profiles and more importantly, “friending” or relations with others, which are only possible due to the nature of Web 2.0 – a platform for communication, community-formation and collaboration.
References
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Hey Megan,
Really enjoyed your paper, I chose to look at the sharing economy as the basis for my paper as well, and it was cool to look at it through the lens of fashion and clothes rental services instead.
I found it especially interesting how you were able to approach the concept from the angle of social capital instead of literal economic/financial transactions. It provided a really unique perspective of the way in which digital economic communities function which I feel hasn’t really been explored extensively in a lot of works I came across through my research. I especially liked your comment about “instrumental intimacy” since community participants generally have only weak ties with one another, and how you contrasted this with the fact that they are able to build this community so successfully as a result of mutual trust anyway.
Do you think that forums like these can form the basis for strong relationships that might translate offline, or is the focus on exchanging goods and services always going to outweigh the social aspect?
Ananya
Hi Ananya,
Thankyou for your kind comment. The sharing economy is such an interesting topic and I will make sure to read your paper!
You’re correct in saying that there has been little exploration of this topic, hence why I thought it would be a good start writing this paper.
In regard to the question you posed, I believe the relationships formed in this community might translate offline but I wonder about the strength of the bond. As my paper explained, many members already have friends/ties within the community due to it being a Perth/ location based community. Of course, these relationships can easily translate offline. However, while it is possible that loaners and renters may form “friendships” offline, I doubt this refers to the term in the vernacular sense, for example I don’t think many of the members who are strangers prior to the renting process would meet for coffee etc. As such, I think most of the members are more focussed on the renting process and exchange of goods rather than the potential friendships.
Hope to hear back from you.
Hi Megan,
I am also a member of Clothes for Rent so I found this paper an interesting read!
It was interesting to read about the correlation of trust and social capital as I know this is the most common exchange on Clothes for Rent, however, some of the renters do not work solely based on trust and require a signature on a contract or copy of license before renting items!
I have rented items before and the first questions my parents asked were “What if they damage it?” “What if they don’t give it back?” Those thoughts had never crossed my mind and negative stories are very rarely posted in the group about these situations so there is definitely an element of trust between (most) members of the group.
Great read 🙂
– Kelsie
Hi Kelsie,
Thankyou for your input! I was actually unaware that some renters require a signature on contract or copy of license prior to renting as all of my experiences so far have been based on mutual trust – I had weak ties with the members involved in my renting experience. I suppose the negotiations vary from renter to renter. I do believe these security measures are the way forward though, to minimise risk for all of the parties involved in the renting process.
You’re correct in saying negative stories are rarely published in the community and that comes down to the clever moderator/ admin Madeline. Of course, it is in her best interest to remove posts that indicate anything other than an effortless experience for everyone especially since the Facebook group is connected to Closetdrop which she co-owns and conducts most of her business.
Thanks again for the comment.
– Megan
Hi Megan,
I really enjoyed reading your conference paper. It was very easy to read and understand, and something that I would read in my own spare time as I have an interest in clothing and fashion. Although, might I add although it was easy to read, you cited and referenced your work really well in order to back up what you were saying.
You mentioned that members have ties or friends within the group which reassures the trust element and that the members are dependent on each other for positive experiences and due to the the level of trust the desired outcome is achieved. What do you believe would be the outcome of deceptive activity where a Facebook user creates a fake social networking presence / fake identity on Facebook, in order to raught the system and deactivate once the outfit is ‘stolen?’ are there any legalities that protect Facebook users?
I look forward to hearing back from you.
– Rachael.
Hi Rachael,
Thankyou for the comment! I’m really glad you enjoyed my paper and that it was of interest to you.
Your question is something I have wondered myself. I did some research and as far as I am aware there are no specific laws relating to conducting “business” (e-commerce) on social media in Australia. Obviously users have to comply with Facebook’s terms of use and the community may be covered by general consumer laws, rules and regulations, however, my findings suggest that Facebook will protect itself at all costs. Furthermore, while parts of the renting process may occur through Facebook (ie. initial contact on the posts and then private messages between parties on the platform), the actual business/ exchange has nothing to do with Facebook.
As I said in my comment to Kelsie above, I believe better established rules (security measures) that apply to the actions of the Clothes for Rent Perth community members should be implemented to prevent the situations you mentioned and the alike from occurring. These rules should be prominent on the Facebook page and there should be consequences for members who breach those rules, however, these are at the discretion of the loaners.
Obviously trust within the community would diminish if users began behaving opportunistically. However, I believe most of the members have good intentions as they are reliant on one another.
I’ll be interested to hear from anyone who knows a bit more about the legalities or from yourself if you find anything.
Once again, thankyou for your comment.
– Megan
Hi Megan,
I found this paper really interesting, as well as the discussion in the comments regarding contracts and fake Facebook profiles to override the concept of mutual trust, as I had read through this paper thinking that the weak ties within a community such as Clothes for Rent could be authenticated through genuine reviews from users who have had a positive/negative experience.
As you mentioned, users are connected by very weak ties as they purely interact for the purpose of exchanges – therefore the very fact that there are next to no negative reviews within the group show that this is a common attitude undertaken by all members within the group to comply if they wish to remain part of that community or strengthen their connection with fellow community members.
Hopefully any negative reviews or fake Facebook profiles can be documented via screenshots and noted throughout the group discussion so that there is record of those who are deceitful.
Thanks for sharing your paper 🙂
Cheers,
Teresa